Perfect on Paper by Gillian Harvey (top 20 books to read txt) 📕

battered Scenic. (‘It’ll be fine,’ Toby had told her knowledgably. ‘There’s plenty of life in the old girl yet … And the car too! Eh!’)

Which was, of course, exactly the kind of joke that goes down well when you’re trying to convince someone you need to sign up for forty grand’s worth of credit.

While she was still reeling from the hit to their bank account, he’d then asked his PA at work to help him choose him an entirely new wardrobe from shops whose names Clare had never even heard of. ‘I just can’t wear my old stuff,’ he’d said. ‘It’s not current enough, not with it enough!’

When she’d seen the receipt, Clare had nearly thrown up. She could have managed a reasonable second-hand car at least with the money he’d splashed out on what his PA had assured him were the ‘latest trends’.

Clare wasn’t too sure what she made of the floral shirts and pointed shoes his twenty-five-year-old PA, Hayley, had picked out, but she’d had to admit Toby looked pretty hot in his new ensembles. He’d lost weight recently: the trousers hung flatteringly on his bum and the shirts, when tucked in, accentuated the fact that the paunch she’d used to tease him about had all but disappeared.

In fact, although his head was somewhere else, the rest of him had begun to resemble the Toby he’d been when they’d first met – young, toned, energetic – only with fewer band T-shirts and more floral cuffs.

She’d probably have been flattered if any of it had been for her. But whenever she made a move, he seemed to almost jump away – as if she’d electrocuted him rather than pinched his bum. Yesterday she’d sidled up to him when he was pouring coffee and he’d nearly tipped the lot over his hand.

‘Hey!’ he’d said, a little too crossly for her liking. ‘Not in the kitchen!’

For a man whose foreplay – back in the days when they’d used to have a normal amount of sex – had often involved coming over and dry-humping her bum when she was loading the dishwasher, this had seemed rather rich. She’d begun to get a little suspicious of Hayley, who seemed to have more say over Toby’s life than she did these days.

The kids had left at eight this morning, both sloping off to the school bus. Both resisting a goodbye kiss. There had been a time, Clare thought grimly, when the little buggers could hardly be prised off her at the school gate. Suddenly the thought of even a quick peck on the cheek before they went off was not only undesirable but – as Katie had put it the other day when she’d actually managed to land one on her daughter before she’d left the house – ‘disgusting’.

Clare counted to thirty and tried the key again. Still nothing.

It was quarter to nine. She’d been cutting it fine to get in for half past as it was. Now she was definitely going to be late. She stepped out of the car into the freezing air and grabbed her battered tote bag full of papers from the passenger seat.

One advantage of living on a main road, she thought as she walked along as best she could in her narrowest heels, was that there was at least a regular bus service into the town centre. The stop was only a five-minute walk, and if she was lucky there might be a bus along quickly enough for her to still make her meeting at ten.

As she rounded the corner, she saw three others waiting by the stop. Two youngish studenty types of the sort that invaded the town in droves between October and June, and a chubby, grey-haired man in a raincoat, from which protruded (rather worryingly) a flash of bare leg followed by a pair of wellies.

The papers strained against the bag and she moved it into her arms, cradling it like a child rather than letting it burst its seams and spew her work all over the pavement. Why wasn’t she one of these women with an appropriate bag for every occasion? Why always the tote bags? she wondered briefly. The other day, she’d emptied one out on her desk and an old pair of bikini bottoms and a battered pair of goggles had fallen out along with her paperwork, two chewed pens and a scattering of sand.

She really needed to go shopping. Perhaps Toby’s PA could pick her out something ‘on trend’. If there was any money left in the kitty that was. Probably with Toby’s attempt to keep up with the Piers Morgans of ITV draining their joint account, a decent bag was probably once again a distant dream.

She thought again of Toby’s man-makeover, the fact he’d thought nothing of splashing the cash on himself, whereas she felt guilty buying a new pair of shoes and was carrying legal documents in a bag that was more suited to tins of sweetcorn. They’d used to be on the same page about everything but now it was as if they had completely different priorities.

Usually, when her ‘work bag’ was flung on the passenger seat, she didn’t really think about it. But walking along the road clutching a bag bursting with important files made her painfully aware of just how unprofessional she must look. Even the potential flasher in his raincoat was holding a leather briefcase.

The traffic that passed her as she walked was constant, and little drips of rainwater began to pepper her tights as drivers flicked the edges of puddles and sent tiny droplets skyward. Suddenly she was aware that there was the noise of a larger vehicle approaching. She glanced over her shoulder and saw to her relief it was the town bus.

The stop was just a few metres away – she’d made it. Deftly stepping to the side as the vehicle hissed to a stop, she even managed to avoid the slightly larger slosh of water it sent up as it pulled